Well, last month I said I might pick on GM, and I decided I
should. From the same Detroit auto show as last month's Ford concept
cars GM displayed a new "plug-in" hybrid called the Volt. It
was labeled a Chevrolet model. Why should I pick on it? In a
nutshell, because it is all wrong.

The Chevrolet Volt Concept

The
Volt is a plug-in hybrid that is supposed to travel up to 40 miles
on a single battery charge. As its description implies, you plug this hybrid
in to recharge it. If your trips are less than 40 miles you should
be able to run purely on battery/recharge power, and this would be
very economical compared to any other available propulsion.

If you travel beyond the battery pack's 40 mile range a small
gasoline engine kicks in to run a generator that both recharges the
battery and runs the car.

Sounds great doesn't it. Well, in
this Car and Driver article
on the Volt they mention that the batteries will cost about $40,000.
That number was derived from the retail price of a laptop battery,
so its hardly meaningful in this context. However, Car and Driver did concede
that even if the price of the battery pack was only $10,000 it would
still not be a cost effective vehicle.

Batteries, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Batteries

So the cost for the battery pack the Volt needs has some kinks to be
work out. But that's not really what is wrong with this car. It is
the fact that it uses batteries at all. I
wrote about this topic over six
years ago.
I said then, and still believe today, that we need to get rid of the
batteries. Why can't we just have a small engine run a generator,
and in turn the generator run the electric motors that drive the
car. With a small engine tuned to perfection to run at a set RPM, it
should be easy to get maximum fuel efficiency from the gasoline part
of my hybrid. Then the only question becomes, how much
horsepower do we need in a gasoline engine to drive a powerful
enough generator, a generator powerful enough to power a car.

If I was an engineer I would work out that math and then look into
getting a patent on the idea.

Conclusion

So... this month I picked on GM for building a cool, plug-in
hybrid... oh, that probably doesn't need to be built.